


Spring to Life

by herbailiwick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Demon Dean Winchester, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2018-02-17 05:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2297675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herbailiwick/pseuds/herbailiwick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 10 AU that continues from "Do You Believe in Miracles?". Dean kills Sam. Sam needs to prevent Dean from causing further destruction.</p><p>First person POV (Sam's). Eventual Sambby, Sam and Bobby together romantically. But not just yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Lucky Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam arrives in Heaven.

"It's happened to other people," I point out, embarrassed. "I'm not the only person to die at the hands of their brother."

Seriously; count everyone who's had that happen since the beginning of time, add in angels, monsters, leviathan, and you got yourself like millions of cases of more of the same. 

I want Ellen to go back to sweeping. I don't like the look on her face. Because she's always been almost just a tiny bit like a mother to me and I just can't handle anything that looks like a mother's love for very long anymore. Maybe if I still deserved it, I could.

Jo was skeptical when I first told Ash and the Harvelles what had brought me to Heaven, but she looks thoughtful now, and just a little sad. "What was it like?" she asks gently.

I didn't need Jo to care too. I kind of wanted her to be pissed for Dean's sake. Everyone's pissed at me for Dean's sake if I speak up about him. That's just how it works.

"Cold. Quick. He didn't linger. You know he could have," I remind her. Dean had tortured in Hell. He's more creative than he gives himself credit for, too. "I told you he wasn't himself, with the Mark and all?" Not that I adequately explained the thing. "He normally wouldn't act on those kinds of feelings."

"What?"

I sigh because I lost her again. "I wasn't surprised," I admit. "He's wanted some kind of revenge on me ever since he got back from Purgatory." She's raising a brow again. "Long story. Ish. Anyway, it was cold, and quick, and he was muttering something about Lucifer and how I was working with him, and I'm not, so I gotta go figure that out."

Ash whistles. "One thing after another with you boys, isn't it?"

"Well, that's the way Dean likes it," I say. We could have gotten a break after Dean came back, but he'd made it clear he liked the drama. A hero's work is never done, and all that. We were never the only heroes, or the best, but try telling that to Dean. Well, actually, don't. Don't bother. Just go along with it.

"I'd stay here, you know?" I look back at Ash, then at Ellen and Jo. "I'd stay here, but I don't trust the way Dean is right now. I trust Dean, just, not with everyone else, not with that Mark and the Blade."

"You don't have to explain yourself to us," Ellen says, and that stops me short for a second. I'm supposed to explain myself. To fellow hunters, to regular folk, to monsters, to angels. It's habit, yeah, but not for no reason.

"Well, then yeah," I admit. "I don't quite trust him right now."

"Good," says Jo. "I mean, he killed you."

"Yeah," I say. I don't know how to explain that I probably should have had a gun under my pillow again. I don't know how to explain that there might have been  _some_ way I could have tried to talk to him that I hadn't tried yet, though, you know, maybe there wasn't. I don't know how to explain that I still like the way he handles things, the good things he does among the bad, the things he believes in, even if I'm never one of those things.

"You got more friends up here, Sam," Ash points out. "You wanna see some of 'em?"

I turn around on the scuffed stool to see him. "Are you kidding me? Of course I do." I can't remember the last time I made a friend. I don't even try anymore, and everyone down on Earth knows it. "Maybe this won't be so bad," I add as he coaxes me to get up. It was kind of like a vacation. At least no one up here would expect me to hunt anything until I was alive again.

"You didn't pay for your drink," Ellen teases me. I turn to look at her, kind of shocked because I'm used to...something different from people. From important people anyway. I don't know, I can't describe it.

"My money comes from stolen credit cards and pool hustling," I joke back, rusty but it sounds like I'm not. "I don't think credit works in Heaven, and you two are too smart for that." She actually likes it, chuckling.

I don't want to go back home yet at all. 

I want to stay dead, like I'd wanted to before that whole Gadreel debacle had finally shown me another level of the darkness Dean is capable of.

I remember that Earth has absolutely nothing for me anymore. No one is going to miss me there.

"You comin', Sam?"

I follow Ash through the Roadhouse door. 

"No one patrols the space between anymore," he tells me. "So I don't put on a disguise. Unless you liked it," he teases. I'm pretty sure he's flirting a little bit. I always liked that about him.

"I like every part of Heaven I've seen," I say. He snorts and shakes his head. Last time, he told us Heaven was where he'd learned how to finally start living. I love the sound of that; like when old people start up a new life's calling.

I must have liked the two days I spent in Heaven before Dean brought me back and damned himself to Hell. I don't think I found them lonely at all.


	2. Dealing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ash takes Sam to see some of his friends.

Same table, and chairs, and even the same pots. Walking on the floor feels the same. It's the place where Dean broke my heart (one of the most notable places anyway) and barely even noticed he was doing it. The post-Purgatory guilt spiral, as opposed to the post-Ruby one.

I know the cabin we walk into really well, and I always connected with its owner whenever we stayed there. How could I not, as time went on? He never feared loneliness or isolation. I'm not sure why he was so okay with it, but as for me? I knew it was what I deserved—well, I _know_ it's what I deserve. Probably.

It's not like he didn't have people who cared about him. Bobby, Jo, Ellen. But he was too caught up in his own whatever for a while, at a time when I wasn't yet, but I soon found out what it was like to be that ready for isolation. I don't think he deserved his isolation, but he was okay with it all the same.

I've soon looked through the entire thing, and Rufus isn't even around. The cabin is empty. We head to the cabin's other door on Ash's say-so, and he scribbles some equations on the wood. "Think I might know where he is."

"Bobby's," I say, understanding. When the whole End of the World thing came up, Rufus left his comfort zone for Bobby. Bobby didn't just choose the cabin at random; Rufus left it to him. Bobby was the guy Rufus had completely taken under his wing in a partnership Bobby said was like Dean and mine.

(Although, as far as I can tell, Rufus would never act like Bobby needed a chaperon. Rufus has probably never spared more than a punch here or there for Bobby, and he'd never knock him out.) I shake the thoughts from my head; Ash's smirk says that, yeah, we're heading to Bobby's. "Nothin' gets past you," he teases. Everything sounds so much lighter and more fun when other people say it. People other than Dean, I mean. 

Bobby was the best at that, at making "moron" sound sweet, at making my name sound like something someone could say without fear or disgust or condescension. I'd hoped to see him ever since I'd realized I was in Heaven again. It was my coma-dreaming mind that had told me he'd want to see me here, and not the real Bobby, but the real Bobby had let me rescue him from Hell. Even _my_ distorted self-doubt can only go so far.

They're playing cards in Bobby's kitchen. When I was soulless, we played so many rounds of poker. I don't think I was as fun to talk to, cause I talked too much, but the cards? That was a language we could agree on. I don't know how he could even stand to look at me, but he did, and he even tried to reach me after I'd come after him with an ax.

Now  _that_ is a friend, I think as I watch them. Rufus notices us first, cause Bobby's turned away from the door.

"Visitors. Genius and a little friend of yours," Rufus says.

Bobby scoots his chair sideways, old wood scraping against old wood. He's wearing the pig hat. It's kind of my favorite. I don't know why; maybe cause he never wears it. 

Bobby's hand falls onto the table in front of him, face-up, and he stands, nearly tripping over the chair until he wins out and it falls over with a clatter. 

He steps over the chair and he's hugging me. "You're not supposed to be dead yet," he admonishes. 

Rufus stands, and I watch him as he does, taking a peek at Bobby's cards, then waiting his turn to shake my hand or greet me or whatever.

Bobby won't let go for a good couple minutes, though. I just hold onto him too. 

"You wanna tell him why you're here, Sam? Or should I?" Ash reminds me it's not just me and Bobby and that other hunter I feel a connection to through mutual isolation.

"No," I say. Bobby pulls away slowly, reluctant, but he wants to hear about the circumstances of my death.

I can see the disappointment on his face that he'd have if I told him. I can see the worry, and he's different somehow, he's lighter, especially compared to what he'd gone through in Hell. I can't do it. I really don't have the heart to say it, not yet. Maybe that's cowardice, but I've never claimed to be a hero.

Well, I claimed to be one once. Then that meant I set Lucifer free.

"Deal me in," I say instead.

Bobby gives me that look like if I try to make him take any of my crap he's not gonna. Rufus greets me with a handshake, tells me it's good to see me, and that's he's glad to be seeing me before Dean, only half joking. I don't think he means cause I'm dead first, just that he means I'm in Heaven, where he is. People don't usually joke about things in my favor like that; it's kind of a nice change. But there's something ominous about it too.

Bobby picks up the cards, casual, more at ease than he'd been the last few times I'd seen him. His rocking chair Heaven did his grouchy ass more good than he'd thought it would. I feel a little less guilty for us getting him killed. "Let's start over again," he commands lightly. "You get on in here too, Ash."

"Yes sir," Ash said, giving Bobby one of his innocent but flirty looks. I don't know; I like that about him. 

Ash takes a seat between Bobby and Rufus, and I sit across from him, cause it's not that big a table and that's the only spot left. I've never told anyone Bobby's home, and his kitchen, are the closest things I've ever had to a home, to a place that meant solace. I especially never told Bobby because that's sappy, and I especially couldn't tell Dean after the house burned down, which I kind of felt must have been part of the curse that follows me around.

Irrational as that is to believe, that a curse follows me around, it's kind of just a euphemism for the fact I screw everything I care about up until it's fucked beyond all recognition.

"You know, I kinda missed this place," I joke, and no part of me is joking about it inside, but I have to cover for it. I just have to. Maybe I can even keep it safe that way. (Though, I'm pretty sure Heaven is safe from my hands of inevitable chaos.)

Bobby deals me in.


	3. Honor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has a request, and he figures he should at least try.

"Okay, genius, but how are you gonna swing that one?"

I get quiet for a moment, but not because I don't know what my answer is. 

"We don't know any angels except Cas, and you said he's pretty much useless now," Bobby adds.

"Well," I say, and draw it out for a bit, not really ready for my ideas to be shot down by Bobby, the guy I dreamed was my savior from Dean. "I thought we could summon Death."

Bobby heaves a sigh, but the look accompanying it is new. I glance at Rufus, who's seen the face too. Rufus shrugs at me.

"Can we do it up here?" Ash asks.

"I trapped a Reaper in my own head. Yeah, we can probably do it up here." Bobby is still looking right at me, like he really sees me. I feel too exposed, so I stare at my cards, even though no one else is thinking about the game at the moment.

The look he's giving me isn't really discouraging. It's...more like a challenge. Like he thinks I actually  _can_ do it.

I don't know what to do with that.

"Look at me, not the damn cards." His hand's on mine, and I can see it, I can see the place where they meet. 

No one touches me except to punch me or give the occasional "It's been a while" or "It'll be a while" set of hugs, like Jody gives really well.

His hand's gone by the time I stop thinking about it. I look at him.

"Seriously, what happened while I was gone?" his voice is soft, and he's more interested in what happened to me than in getting out of Heaven. Good for him, because that means he really has been enjoying his stint, but it's awkward because it's attention and I don't really like to talk about how...

"I failed Dean, basically. Because you can't win with Dean. You know all about it; the deal we made meant nothing. You blamed me just like he did," I point out. 

"That's true." Bobby's eyes have a weight in their gaze that's always drawn me to whatever it is he's got to say. "I reacted. Maybe there's more to the story, though, than you just not looking. There'd have to be; you're not a simple person, and I mean that as a compliment."

"I was so lonely," I blurt out. "You know, _suicidally_ lonely. I couldn't think about Dean, and I thought he was in Heaven having the time of his life, just like this. He was in Purgatory, and even he admits I never could have known that. Even if I knew where he was, how could I have gotten him out?"

"Ain't nobody gettin' into Purgatory," Rufus agrees. "Humans, anyway."

"Well," I hesitate. "I mean, it's easier now. Reapers have starting shuttling people across. I don't know. I mean, that's how I saved Bobby."

"Bobby was in Hell."

My stories _don't even make sense to hunters anymore_  I acknowledge to myself as I explain, "There's a back door into Hell in Purgatory."

Rufus shoots Bobby a look like he should control his young friends, or his surrogate sons, or whatever Dean and I qualify as. Maybe we're one of each.

"You couldn't have known that," Bobby agrees. "Sorry I got pissed. I wasn't in a good mood, and I spoke without knowing how it was. I'd spent too long cooped up in a cell dealing with not-yous and not-Deans."

I nod. 

"So. Death?" Ash says. "Horseman Death?"

"And it won't be the first time we summoned him either," Bobby says, proud. "Not that I think he'll be all that willing."

"He was going to help me stay dead forever," I manage to share. "After the trials, I was dying. I was tired of deals being made, you know?"

Bobby understood. I knew looking at him that he did.

"And he was willing?"

"He called reaping my soul an honor. I think that's good for something, maybe. I don't know. Dean...uh." I couldn't talk about what Dean did at that point. "Dean...will. Be pissed he missed out on seeing him," I finally finish, and can't believe I even went there. Like Dean cared about anything anymore! Nothing was sacred to him anymore. Not even pickle chips.

"Yeah," Bobby explained to Ash, "Death and Dean are friends. Though maybe he saved Sam's soul for Sam and not for Dean, huh?" It hadn't occurred to me, and, for some reason, I don't like the thought.

Maybe I shouldn't call him after all. He's already done enough for me, for all of us.

"We'll have to see where Dean and Death stand now, then," Ash teases me, and I don't want to tell Bobby yet, but I'm going to have to soon. I'm going to have to tell him even my own brother doesn't want me.  _Especially_ my own brother.

I give Ash a look. He raises a good point, though. Not that it would be like choosing sides, whether he decided to swing bringing me to life again or not.

But, it'd be just a little bit like Death was choosing sides. 

Would he call reaping Dean an honor anymore? Would he have ever done so in the first place?

Am I kind of jealous of the thought? It'd be so typical, for Death to feel like Dean's a hero. It's like I'm the only one in the world who knows he's not one, not all the time.

Maybe the thought's not causing me jealousy. Maybe that feeling is just righteous indignation.

Or maybe it's dishonor.


	4. Object Permanence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam wants something bad enough to fight someone for it, for the first time in a long time.

"Hang on," Bobby says. "Doesn't that mean...I might disappear?"

"What?! No, Bobby don't say that," I say, my tone light, but I'm not losing Bobby right now; he's the person I've been the closest to my whole life, even when I couldn't be close to Dean, and, just, no. Not after what Dean did, and not so soon.

"If he doesn't die, I can't question him, right? No ghost, no backsies, no innocence. I should be in Hell right now."

"Uh. Good point," I agree.

"We have to make sure Gavin gets back to his own time, and that he sinks on that boat."

"I'm sure he does," I swallow, and resolve not to think about it.

Bobby gives me one of those familiar  _looks_ , and I feel even more at home. "You have a lot of faith, and I'll give you that. But time travel is time travel."

"Yeah, and if you go to Hell? I'll get out out again." Heck, during the second trial, the visit had been a cake walk. Once you've been in the Cage, it spoils you for the rest of the experience, I guess.

"Other than that potential nightmare, Crowley's just the same old grumpy Crowley?" Bobby asks with concern. Maybe it's concern for my avoiding the topic. Maybe it's just concern cause he's Crowley and I'm me.

I sigh, look around Bobby's living room. Most of me is wrapped up in an old quilt that was probably Bobby's mom's. I'd used it before, back on Earth. It smells the same in Heaven. I don't know why that's weird to me, weirder than any of the rest of it so far.

"Pretty much," I agree. "I mean, he annoys me a little more, since he axed the people we'd saved and kind of egged Dean on, but he's basically the same."

"Pervy as ever?" Bobby snarked. "You know that's half the reason he marked me for the pit."

"Cause he liked you?" My eyes are on him, and I'm forgetting about Sarah and Jenny and Tommy. I give him a little once-over (it's not like I haven't before, and not out of objective comparison either). Not that Crowley didn't like  _everybody_. Pervy was a good word.

"I may have used tongue," Bobby points out. "But he tried to go in for seconds."

I snort and wish I could tell Dean.

"That stays between me, you, and Crowley," Bobby says, knowing it won't; that's a non-agreement.

Although, the sobering truth of the matter is, maybe it will. If Dean's some raging Mark-wearer and keeps Blading people left and right and all. If that's all that's going to be left of my brother. 

"There any talk about Lucifer up here?" I ask, trying for casual. Of course, it hits Bobby hard, and his mind reels while the rest of him tries not to.

He's so suspicious, but I'm not nervous about it at all. I saved his ass, after all. And he should know I always will.

"Should there be talk?" he asks, also trying for casual. God, we're awful at this.

I shrug. "If there is, let me know." I push out of the blanket cocoon. "You still got that rusty old shower?"

"Yeah," he admits slowly, like its embarrassing that he does. It's not embarrassing; it's real, authentic. "The gang's all here. Even the panic room," he says while judging my reaction. 

"Cool." There's no rush of emotion hearing about the place. There's no adrenaline. There's no wondering if he's gonna manhandle me into the salted iron room or if, God forbid, Dean himself will burst through the wall with an axe and do it for him.

Honestly, what have I got to lose? What have I got to be scared of anymore? This is Heaven. And I've already had a demon in me, I've already had demon blood in me and had Bobby and Dean force it out of me. I've already been soulless fresh on the end of a murder attempt with Death in my face forcing that glowing, horrible thing back into me in all its mutilation.

I've had an angel and an archangel in me too. It's been a free-for-all. I had a _teenage boy experimenting with witchcraft_ in me.

I take a shower for the hell of it, and decide I'm not going back to my Heaven, the one Dean's not in and may never be in again. This is where I wanna spend the time we need to collect stuff from other people's Heavens. I'd actually argue with Bobby if he tried to make me leave. 

Yeah. That's right; I just said that. I couldn't decorate my room in the bunker if someone sat a catalog in front of me and said, "Choose!", but I'd fight a guy about his own house. That shouldn't feel so good to know; I've been afraid of feeling like I want to fight people, of being "unfair" to people.

I love the idea, though. It's good to know there's still something besides What Dean Wants that I actually care about.


	5. BOGO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death has a proposition of his own.

"Here, it’s not about knowin’ somebody," Ash told me. "It’s about knowin’ somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody. But I got you covered."

Who Ash knew turned out to be his ex-boyfriend from MIT, who had a sister who used to collect fulgurite using lightning rods before she died. Bobby knew a hunter named Olivia who was killed in the Rising of the Witnessess, and she helped hook us up with some of the other ingredients. 

It’s always kind of amazed me how many hunters Bobby knew—or, knows, I guess—who are women. My dad avoided them, and Dean does too, in a monster hunting context. I’ve thought about it, too often, but I’m pretty sure Dean would have trusted Ruby if her vessel had been a guy.

Death stares at us calmly when we finish summoning, standing near the card table. "Sam," he says. I think I even feel my soul tense up. It probably remembers him too.

"Hey," I finally say, with a nod of acknowledgment. 

"You called me here to make a deal." He pulls out a chair, the one I've been using regularly, like he knows somehow, and he takes a seat in it. "What will it be? Do you intend to continue our last conversation, or is this about something else?"

What I saw in my head was real. I took a moment to think about that. He had really said that reaping my soul was an honor. I'd had confidence in the idea enough to relay the story to Bobby, but part of me, a large part, had still doubted it was anything but a hallucination. If anything ever focuses on me, that's bad. If anything ever puts any faith in me, it all goes to hell.

Dean's got the same track record at the moment, though, I suppose. Maybe he's got an even worse one.

I think Death mentioning it was like he was giving me the option. “You don’t think I owe it to try and stop Dean?” I laugh lightly. 

“No, Sam,” he says honestly. “I really don’t.”  


Bobby interrupts the silence I spent considering Death’s attention to my existence, that Death spent noting my consideration.

"Sam needs to be brought back to life,” he says. “This isn’t about ‘deserve’; it’s family. And our only angel friend ain't doing too hot."  


"Castiel," Death acknowledges. "No, I don't suppose he is. Sam doesn’t seem to want to leave,” he paused for a dramatic moment, “alone.” It was true, the guilt reminds me with a pang. And deserve would always be part of it for me. “You're going too, Robert." 

That wasn't supposed to be on the menu. But now that it is, I like it so much I'm a little offended, on Bobby's behalf and my own. It’s so  _forward_ , and the rest of it all feels so  _back_.

"Sam could probably do it alone," Death says with cool finality. "But he's not going to." 

"Okay."

"Bobby—" I start, but Death raises a hand, and I glare at him. 

"You know how to die, Sam Winchester. And you know how to suffer. I find that boring, considering who I am.”

I turn to look at Bobby, to see if he understands. He doesn’t. We’re lost together, like we’ll be lost on an even greater scale if he sends us back to Earth.

“What I want to see is you living. Stop Dean, by all means. But  _start_  Sam. I don't save people so that they can hide and waste away. In fact, I don't save people." Death reached for the ring on his finger. “It’s not my job, and it’s not my hobby.”

"Wait," I say as he touches it. I swallow. "Wait. Death...."

Death shoots me a look full of pity. "You've waited long enough."


End file.
